Full time teacher required to teach EFL in Beijing, China

The China University of Geosciences (Zhongguo Dizhi Daxue) is a medium-sized university located on a pleasant campus in Beijingis Haidian district, the university and electronics quarter in the northwestern part of the city. Also in the neighborhood are Beijing University, Qinghua University and a score of other institutions of higher education, plus the Summer Palace and the Yuanmingyuan (the park containing the ruins of the earlier summer palace). Five kilometers to the east of us is the designated site of the 2008 Olympics.

At present we have a foreign staff of eight (seven full-time, one part-time; four Americans, two Britons, a Canadian and a New Zealander). Three will be leaving at the end of the semester to start postgraduate programs back home. We are therefore looking to engage three new foreign instructors full-time for the 2002-03 academic year, which starts in September. Candidates must be native speakers of English with at least a BA or BS.

We offer the standard one-year contract for foreign teachers in government educational institutions:

* The normal teaching load for foreign instructors is 12-14 classroom hours per week, and in no case more than 14.

* The salary for teachers starting in September will be 2, 800 yuan per month, adjustable for experience; 30% can be converted to US dollars. With a bit of care, this salary is sufficient to get one through the month comfortably. For teachers who would like extra income, there are abundant opportunities for part-time off-campus employment.

* Teachers are paid for the full academic year, from September through July, including a month or more of holiday around the Spring Festival (January-February).

* Early departure (late June Ã± early July) for summer vacation can usually be worked out.

* The university will pay for a plane ticket back to one's home of record.

* Health care is provided free under the state medical system.

* Teachers are housed rent-free in pleasant two-room furnished flats (kitchen, stone tile floors, two enclosed balconies, natural gas, hot water, air conditioning) in a building completed in 2000. Though foreign instructors are grouped together in one of the building's six entryways, they are in no sense segregated from their Chinese neighbors -- there are Chinese living in the entryway, mostly postdocs in the earth sciences. The living quarters are apartments for independent professionals; there is nothing dorm-like about them. This is a good campus for independent people interested in serious exposure to Chinese life without a heavy load of bureaucratic hassles.

One of the attractions of this campus is the long history of cordial relations between the foreign staff and the university administration. The people in the Ã®waibanÃ® (i.e. the foreign affairs office that every state unit here has; ours happens to be called the Office of International Cooperation, and the title is not a misnomer) are reasonable, straightforward and easy to deal with. Ditto for the Department of Foreign Languages.

We teach PhD candidates in the earth sciences (average age: 30) and undergraduates in a 4-year BA program in English (the focus is strongly on English for worldly careers, not literature) inside the Department of Foreign Languages. We also serve as instructors in one-semester elective courses for undergraduates not specializing in English. An attempt is made to keep these groups to a manageable size by Chinese standards, i.e. 25 to 30 students. The doctoral candidates are sorted into levels on the basis of their English ability; such a procedure, though normal elsewhere, is unusual for China. Undergraduates also test into the elective courses.

This autumn for the first time we will be teaching students in a new MA program in English linguistics.

Instructors for the graduate students do not need to know much about the earth sciences, but it is helpful to be familiar with academic life in the West and the language of seminars and conferences.

We are looking for English instructors with a serious commitment to good teaching -- people who, whatever field their education has been in, take a professional attitude toward what happens in the classroom. Our program gives teachers a great deal of independence and we want staff who will use that latitude wisely.

We are particularly interested in applicants with any of the following:

* A solid academic record in any field * Teaching experience * A record of success in learning foreign languages * A keen interest in China, from whatever perspective * Some knowledge of Mandarin

To apply to join our staff, please send a resume/CV and a letter outlining your reasons for wanting to teach in China, or to teach in Beijing if you are already in the country. What about China makes it worth the investment of a year or two of your life? How do you expect to use your time here when not teaching? Also of great interest to us would be your assessment of any previous teaching experience that you have had.

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